From: Blunderov (squooker@mweb.co.za)
Date: Thu Jan 31 2002 - 10:46:07 MST
[Blunderov]
.net Magazine(South African edition), Issue 53, Jan 2002, a nation wide
monthly PC magazine that is hugely popular due to the free software that
comes with it, contained the following article:
<rip>
Holy Smoke
Lawrence Robinson on the tyranny of America's evangelical preachers.
By day the stomped their feet on TV sets across America, screaming words of
doom and then deliverance, combining the savage gusto of Hitler with the
sartorial elegance of Ron Atkinson fake tans, and more gold rings than a
cockney villain.
They put a dollar value on salvation and persecuted those that wouldn't pay.
Then by night, away from the lights and the cameras, they trawled the
darkest streets in search of three dollar hookers degenerate thrills and
violent sex. They were thieves, perverts and charlatans. But, in America at
least, they were also the divine messengers of God.
Then as the Berlin Wall crumbled, the evangelical preachers of moral outrage
fell silent. Televangelist Jim Bakker was caught in an extramarital tryst
and convicted of conspiracy and fraud for stealing millions of dollars from
the collection plate. Jimmy Swaggert was forced to resign hi $145 ministry
for performing deranged acts with prostitutes, again financed by church
contributions. Oral Roberts, a Tulsa faith healer, went as far as to demand
his flock cough up an $8 million ransom he claimed God had put on his life.
His followers paid, of course, but then things turned ugly when God suddenly
upped the ransom by another eight big ones.
Like the sanctimonious folk they are, they very publicly and very tearfully
repented. And the lord Jee-zuss, hal-ay-loo-yah, rid them of Satan and
forgave them their sins. Which is unfortunate. Because now they're back.
The net has become home to an estimated one million religious web sites and
by the end of this decade 50 million people will rely solely on the internet
to fulfil their religious needs. The big-ticket televangelists want to make
sure it's their message you hear and have been quick to embrace the new,
albeit secular, medium. Their furious, take-no-prisoners delivery of all
words Godly can now be heard 24/7. Let me hear you say "Praise the Lord!"
Swaggart's back a-teachin' and a-preachin' in live webcasts (www.jsm.org)
although recent media reports suggest, so are the prostitutes. One-time
presidential nomination candidate and Bakker buddy, Par Robertson, airs his
religious chatshow [i] The 700 Club [/i] on both cable and the Web
(www.cbn.org). Then there is the delightful reverend Jerry Falwell
(www.falwell.com), Baptist minister, chancellor of Liberty University in
Virginia, and espouser of all things moral.
After the senseless acts of September 11, grieving Americans were left
asking one simple question: Why? Reverend Falwell took it upon himself to
provide an answer. Speaking on "The 700 Club" two days after the attacks, he
said that feminists, abortion providers, homosexuals, pagans and the federal
courts that had banned school prayer and legalised abortion had so weakened
the United States spiritually that God had "lifted the curtain of
protection" and allowed the terrorist attacks to happen. He went on to say
that God will "allow the enemies of America to give us what we probably
deserve".
"All of them who have tried to secularise America, I point the finger in his
face and I say, 'you helped this happen'." Robertson responded: "Jerry,
that's my feeling." He later issued a statement that added: "We have
imagined ourselves invulnerable and have been consumed by the pursuit of
health wealth material pleasures and sexuality." And that's just the
preachers. Most of America shook their heads in dismay and many, I suspect,
were left searching for some better noise. "There was a time when religion
ruled the world," wrote Hurmence Green. "It is known as the Dark Ages."
The words of Falwell and Robertson bear a chilling similarity to those of
Osama Bin Laden and other extremists who spew vile messages of hatred and
commit all manner of atrocities in the name of religion. Moral outrage is
the last refuge of the morally corrupt, and maybe the internet has a role in
exposing those who claim to know the will of God and strive to impose their
beliefs on others. Many theologians argue that as technology expands human
control and knowledge, it loosens the hold of religion. The internet could
make it harder for extremists like Robertson, Falwell, and bin Laden to
preserve the walls of intolerance upon which they scramble so feverishly.
If not a better noise, the net at least offers a different one. The Agnostic
Church (www.agnostic.org) opposes the "despots" and "kooky right-wing fringe
and promotes "The believers in the God of Abraham can be converted to
agnosticism if their minds are not closed by prejudice." Then there's the
Church of Virus (www.lucifer.com), a "mimetically engineered atheist
religion" and "neo-cybernetic philosophy for the 21st Century." Or The
Atheism Web (www.infidels.org/news/atheism)which rejoices in a total absence
of belief of any kind. There's not a single hallelujah between them. But
then they're not demanding redemption for donations, either, and I don't
recall an act of terrorism or persecution ever being committed by an
agnostic fundamentalist .net
<tear>
Regards
Blunderov.
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